


Love is a Gentle Color

by Queerapika



Category: Cardcaptor Sakura
Genre: F/F, Synesthesia, Teen Crush, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 07:05:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13631181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queerapika/pseuds/Queerapika
Summary: Had she been another girl, Sakura might have been envious. But all she wanted was to give something in return, something to repay the love and devotion she received.In the end, she found the one thing that Tomoyo would not do for herself.just some good old SakuTomo fluff





	Love is a Gentle Color

**Author's Note:**

> this was written 2 years ago for a friend's birthday and I decided to brush it up and post it for this femslash february.
> 
> As always, if you wanna chat or say hi to me on tumblr, my url is the-smallest-kurapika

_And you, you, you_  
_You colour me in_  
_Turn me round when I’m wrong_  
_You make me strong_

 Rea Garvey, "Colour Me In"

* * *

 

There seemed nary a thing that Tomoyo’s nimble hands could not do.

They transformed meters of smooth fabric into flowing dresses in the course of a few nights without getting pricked even once - for Sakura, whose short but intense experiences with sewing always ended with blood and plasters, this seemed like a special kind of magic. Even when Tomoyo gave her a set of thimbles for White Day, it didn’t break the spell, there was so much more to marvel at: how the dresses always fit her like a second skin, no matter how much puberty changed the shape of her body. How Tomoyo had the stamina to work on a piece for hours when she rarely possessed stamina for any other physical exercise.

And how her fingers could fly over the keys of a piano, quick like pouncing cats! Sometimes, Tomoyo even composed little melodies, patterns of ebony and ivory that she had one of her bodyguards translate into notes because for all of her qualities, reading sheet music was not a skill Tomoyo possessed. Because to her, notes were colors and finding them in black little dots was a concept she struggled to wrap her mind around.

But Tomoyo turned melodies into dresses, too. For her fourteenth birthday, Sakura received _Für Elise_ as a white muslin dress hemmed with pastel lacings of many different colors.

Had she been another girl, Sakura might have been envious. But all she wanted was to give something in return, something to repay the love and devotion she received.

In the end, she found the one thing that Tomoyo would not do for herself.

* * *

 

It’s one of these afternoon‘s in the summer that are too humid to be anything else than lazy and the girls have spent their time lying on the floor of Sakura’s room in front of a large fan while watching reruns of old NCIS episodes when Sakura nudged her feet against her friend’s calf gently and offered to paint Tomoyo’s nails.

“Aren’t my nails too short for that?“, she asks with a bemused twinkle in her eyes. Sakura wrinkles her nose and tries to blow the single strand of hair from her forehead that slipped out of the row of criss-crossed bobby pins she used to put it back in the first place. 

Tomoyo looks like The Flower smells - sweet and gentle, soothing even, a steady source of calm and pleasance in Sakura’s life and so Sakura is not surprised to find that her friend’s hands are soft as she raises them to examine the nails. “Psh, nonsense. They’re perfect.“ Delicate and clean, almost polished. Not a speck of dirt unterneath. Sakura has no idea how Tomoyo does it - all she knows is that those are hands that were made to be kissed. She wants nothing more than to press her lips on the graceful knuckles and swear her gratitute; she wants to turn them and lean her cheek in the curve of Tomoyo’s palm.

She doesn’t.

“Sakura?”, Tomoyo whispers and tilts her head, running her free hand through the flowing mass of her black curls.

Sakura makes a helpless noise. She wishes she could play it cool but the truth is that beautiful girls are her achilles heel, her one and only weakness. It’s worse with Tomoyo because they know each other so well - she has yet to find out how to avoid the fluttering in her stomach when Tomoyo laughs or swishes her skirts, has to keep herself from measuring the spaces between Tomoyo’s beauty spots with her fingers, compassing a territority so familiar yet uncharted.

Her voice comes out small when she says: “I think lighter colors work better for smaller nails. I just don’t have that many.“

“Ah,“ Tomoyo replies. For once, a hint of pink spreads high in her cheeks. “I wouldn’t know.“ She slips her hand out of Sakura’s grip hesitanly, fingertips brushing over the skin as if she could read its tiny wrinkles and creases like braille. Sakura all but jumps to her feet to get the box which holds her small yet steadily growing nail polish collection from her night stand. When she comes back to sit next to Tomoyo, she pulls the box into her lap and opens it. Tomoyo leans in close, so close; her hair spills over Sakura’s shoulder, heavy and soft, emitting a vague lemon scent.

“You have a lot of pink,“ she notes.

“Uh-huh.“ She likes pink most, nothing has changed about that even when she grew into her awkward teenage years. However Tomoyo prefers to wear shades of purple, so they might clash. There is also the matter of brushes - when working with nails as small as Tomoyo’s, there is not much room to navigate while applying, so she has to pick one of the brands with smaller and rounded brushes. Sakura picks up a few bottles and holds them up, squinting at them like a scientist who just found an impurity in her test tube. 

Eventually, she settles for a really tiny bottle of a faded gold color that she got for her birthday.

Her hands, usually so steady, begin to tremble slightly before she makes the first stroke. Sweat prickles at the back of her neck. Sakura calms herself knowing that it is easier to do someone else’s nails because she does not have to switch to using her weak hand. And besides, she had magic! Everything would turn out nicely if she just hoped for it hard enough, surely.

Thus encouraged, Sakura began to work.

Eager and focused, she missed the fond lines that curled up at the corner of Tomoyo’s mouth.


End file.
